Look no further than the trenches for the telling difference in Cal's 27-9 loss to No. 13 USC on Saturday at the Memorial Coliseum on a warm and muggy afternoon.

The line on this game was found in the lines.

Cal quarterback Zach Maynard was harried from one end of the field to the other by a Trojans defensive front that sacked him seven times, three by relentless end Morgan Breslin (a Diablo Valley College alum), and forced him into two interceptions.

At one point early in the fourth quarter, Maynard appeared to give up as he trotted out of bounds on 3rd-and-15 from the Cal 20-yard line for a 3-yard loss. He fired the ball into the ground in frustration.

"I think up front, they played more physical," Cal head coach Jeff Tedford said. "Zach was under a lot of duress. We couldn't get the running game going. I felt up front, they were better than us."

Maynard's USC counterpart, Matt Barkley, was kept clean and upright by his offensive line as he completed 22 of 34 passes for 192 yards and two touchdowns to Marqise Lee. Never mind that Barkley continued to play himself out of the Heisman Trophy picture with two interceptions.

"I think the game was won at the line of scrimmage," USC head coach Lane Kiffin said. "We limited these guys to 77 yards rushing. If you look at the plusses and minuses when it comes to sacks, we had seven and they had none."

USC's offensive line blocked well enough for tailbacks Silas Redd (158 yards) and Curtis McNeal (115) to easily surpass 100 yards each and help their offense control the flow of the game with 488 total yards, 6.6 yards per play, on 74 snaps.

Although tailback C.J. Anderson gained 32 yards on five carries and Brendan Bigelow had 31 on four, the Bears didn't have the blocking to sustain much of a running game. Credit USC's active front four for that.

"We just have to do our job better," Cal right guard Chris Adcock said. "They were bringing all kinds of stuff. We're not discouraged, just frustrated. We know what we can do. We've seen flashes of it."

That's the problem for this Cal team - flashes but no finishes. The Bears played Ohio State even until late in the fourth quarter in losing 35-28 in Columbus. Against USC, Cal was down 17-9 as the fourth quarter started, but the Trojans added a field goal and a late touchdown on a 3-yard pass from Barkley to Lee to settle things.

"It comes down to execution," Adcock said. "That's what it's always been. We have to make more plays than the other team."

At 1-3, with only a gimme win over lower-division Southern Utah, Tedford said Cal still can qualify for a bowl game with eight straight Pac-12 games remaining. At minimum, that means going 5-3 the rest of the way.

"Absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind or our team," the coach said. "There's a lot of football left to play. I have a lot of confidence in the chemistry of our team. We have a good team. We have to get over the hump. Two weeks on the road, we didn't do that. We've got to make more plays."

The response to a statement like that is good teams make plays and bad teams do not. Cal tantalizes with talent at some positions (wide receiver Keenan Allen, Bigelow) but ultimately gives way to the inevitability of defeat when faced with a superior opponent.

Against USC, Cal's defensive game plan was to prevent Lee and Robert Woods, premier wide receivers, from turning a football game into a track meet. In that, the Bears achieved their goal, as Woods was held to 30 yards on five receptions. Lee finished with 11 catches for 94 yards, an average of 8.5 yards per reception.

Thwarted in the passing game, Barkley and the Trojans turned to a USC staple, their running backs. Behind a resolute line, McNeal averaged 11.5 yards per carry and Redd 7.5.

That's reason enough in explaining how the Trojans won this game and left the Bears on the wrong side of the hump yet again.